Traditionally, vehicle dealers, such as automobile dealerships, manufacturers and the like have been limited in their ability to effectively market their vehicles to previous customers and/or current service customers. In many instances, automobile dealerships have typically relied on the product itself as the means for trying to assure customer allegiance in the form of repeated purchases/leases from the same manufacturer and, more importantly, the same dealership. In this regard, the mindset has been that, if the customer has been pleased with his/her current vehicle in terms of value, performance and reliability, as well as pleased with the service provided by the dealership over the lifetime of the vehicle, the customer is likely to return to the same dealership for subsequent vehicle purchases/leases.
It is only when, and if, the previous customer returns to the vehicle dealership that a vehicle proposal is offered to the returning customer based on his/her current needs. This typically transpires by having the previous customer interface with a sales associate so that the sales associate can gain an appreciation of the customer's current needs, e.g., what type of vehicle the customer desires, what type of financial situation the customer is currently experiencing and any other relevant information that may need to be considered in offering and structuring a vehicle sales/lease proposal for the customer.
Targeted marketing or advertising in the vehicle sales realm, and more specifically targeted marketing/advertising aimed at returning customers, has generally been limited to mass postal/electronic mailings or the like that are propagated to a targeted segment of the population or to the specific group of previous sales/lease customers and/or current service customers. These types of marketing tactics have limited success because they are generic in content and do not address directly to the individual needs of particular customers. While such marketing/advertising campaigns may be directly addressed to previous customers and may acknowledge the fact that the customer is a previous customer, the advertisement/marketing materials do not typically differ from individual to individual and thus do not address the specific needs of the previous customer.
In today's electronically networked world, the ability to obtain, in real-time, information, and more specifically consumer information, is rapidly increasing on a continuous basis. Not only is an increasing amount of data/information being accumulated and stored at the individual or consumer level, the ability to efficiently mine this data is becoming increasingly more realistic. In terms of a vehicle dealership, the dealership has instantaneous access to previous vehicle financial transaction data, such as through dealership databases including ADP (Automatic Data Processing) dealer services databases, Reynolds & Reynolds databases and the like. In addition, the vehicle dealerships have access to their own unique, customer specific data. Additionally, vehicle dealerships can access and mine data from any other current, future known and/or future accessible data base. Such auxiliary databases may be instrumental in providing data to a vehicle dealership which it can then use to determine a vehicle proposal for a customer based on insight into the customer's needs.
Therefore, a need exists to develop methods, apparatus, computer program products and the like which provide for targeted and customized marketing to vehicle customers and more specifically, targeted and customized marketing to a dealership's and/or manufacturer's previous customers. The desired methods, apparatus, computer program products and the like should be an automated process that allows for dealerships and/or manufacturers to efficiently construct and disseminate customized vehicle proposals that address the recipient of the proposal's particular circumstances, including the financial obligations surrounding the recipient's current vehicle and the like. As a means of constructing the customized vehicle proposals, the desired methods, apparatus, computer program products and the like should have access to customer databases and any other databases that may provide insight into the customer's current vehicle, such as the current value of the vehicle, the customer's current vehicle financial transaction obligations and/or the customer's current needs.